Category: Ideas

The role of social media as a machine for allowing groups of people to be in a state of perpetual outrage is a trend which shows no signs of abating. Love it or loathe it, what should you do about it? Is responding to organised online campaigning a reasonable reaction to the Voice of the Customer or are you just caving into cyber-bullying?

Following my earlier post on my experience with BT replacing my WiFi router (all gone well, the new router appears to be an improvement) I came across an interesting article from InnovationBubble on whether a frictionless service means a meaningless service and a less valuable relationship as a result.

To avoid wasting money investing in a frictionless service it’s worth understanding what it is your customers want – or more precisely, what outcome they are trying to achieve.

Have we got our approach to CX wrong? I’ve got a concern that CX practitioners get marginalised when what they do is massively important for the businesses in which they work. Quantum physics can help here too…

Albert Einstein is credited – perhaps inaccurately – with the saying ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results’ and this received wisdom inhibits us, I think, from trying something the same, albeit with a different twist.

It’s Valentine’s Day, which we all know is the annual effort by the chocolate industry to fill in the gap between Christmas and Easter over-indulgence by buying over-priced confectionery involving heart shapes and red wrapping. Or it’s the flower industry getting a lift before Mothers’ Day. Or it’s the card industry still trying to be relevant in the era of e-cards and… well, you get the drift: it’s a feast day for cynics. Or is it? For the customer experience-obsessive it’s a day of wonder – Continue reading “Valentine’s Day – not just for cynics”

Beginning a regular review of my own good, bad and indifferent customer experiences, in the past week. If this seems like an unnecessary insight into my fabulous life then apologies but, as Socrates almost said, ‘the unexamined customer experience is not worth having’. Here we go with some highlights and lowlights…

YouTube is a wonderful thing if you like to be distracted by random stuff from people that you like. Whilst rehearsing a choir part from a YouTube track by my local community choir the other night the suggested videos list threw up a thoroughly cringeworthy appearance by Frank Zappa on the Steve Allen Show on 4 March 1963. Cringeworthy it may be but it illustrates the way genuine innovators can often come up against ridicule when their ideas first appear.

It’s still, just about, the beginning of 2017 and definitely time – if you haven’t already done so – to set some objectives for the year. Set them already? Done your tax return? All set for February’s challenges? Good for you – this post might not be for you, however if you still have a nagging sense of self-doubt after all that efficiency, read on…